Hello again! Here I am, finally updating my blog, after a
very busy first couple of months in the second semester. This semester, I’m leading
more lessons and taking on more projects at my school, in addition to my
after school Chinese classes and volunteer activities, so I’m busier than ever.
So now I’m going to take some much-needed time to reflect on what teaching is
like in the second half of a Fulbright ETA grant.
Now
that I’ve been there for a few months, I have two new responsibilities at my
school this semester. I’m helping coach my school’s team for the county-wide annual
Reader’s Theater Competition, where eight of my students will perform a play. I
wrote a script adapting the story of Aladdin and it’s been incredible to see
the way my students’ individual personalities peek out through their
performances. It can be really hard to express oneself in a foreign language,
so I love to see students playing their funniest Genie or wittiest Aladdin.
In addition to Reader’s Theater, I’m now
leading my school’s English Club. It’s been one of the most fun teaching
experiences I’ve had because I have so much freedom. Unlike with my other
classes, I don’t have to follow any textbook or schedule, so my only goal is to
ensure that my students have fun while learning English. We read picture books
like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, sing songs like Itsy
Bitsy Spider, and play games like Red Light, Green Light. I’m teaching them
about American holidays like Valentine’s Day. Last week, I hid Easter eggs
around my classroom and had the students hunt for them. The eggs had slips of
paper that corresponded with English questions they got candy for answering.
In my
regular English classroom, teaching feels much different this semester than it
did the first. I’m much more comfortable leading lessons now and have a much
better sense of what does and doesn’t work for English language learners. More
importantly, my students and I are more comfortable with each other. It took my
students a while to warm up to me, which is understandable given that I was a
new, very different person in their lives. We had a lot of cultural and
language barriers to overcome but now we’re able to connect with each other
both inside and outside of class.
I
remember coming back the first day of second semester. My fourth graders ran to
my class, screaming, “Eeeeeeemmmmmmmmmaaaaa!!” One came up to me and rambled at
me in rapid-fire Chinese. I nodded along like I usually do when I don’t
understand my students, but then my coteacher told me, “She just said that she
missed you.” Another
time, two fourth graders came into my room before class and picked up the
picture book on my desk (Elbow Grease by John Cena). They began read it
aloud together, sounding out the words they didn’t already know. I was nearly
overcome with joy and pride, because they were working so hard to understand
English without any prompting from me. The moment reinforced how important storybooks
are and I was happy I could bring that story into my students’ lives.
I know
I’ve made incredible progress with my sixth graders just by the fact that they
will now talk to me. Sixth grade is that difficult age where you don’t want to
be caught dead actually getting along with your teachers, so trying to get my
sixth graders to speak to me, let alone use any English, has been a struggle.
But now that I’ve spent a lot more time with them and have shown them I’m willing
to learn some Chinese in order to talk to them, they’ve warmed up to me. Now a
group of girls approaches me in a giggling cluster before class every day. I
ask them questions in English and then in Chinese. Another student said he
wants to get better at English, so he’s begun to ask me his own questions in
English, like, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
It’s strange
to think that I only have three months left in Taiwan. Most of the time, I feel
like I just got here, but then I’ll have an entire conversation in Chinese with
a stranger or effortlessly navigate around the city on my scooter, and realize
I’ve learned a lot from the time that I’ve been here. I’m excited to spend this
semester building on all the knowledge and relationships I formed last year and
embarking on new adventures with my students.
